When comparing Moai SDK vs Adventure Game Studio, the Slant community recommends Adventure Game Studio for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?”Adventure Game Studio is ranked 20th while Moai SDK is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Adventure Game Studio is:

Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine.

Pros

Pro

Fast

Pro

Gives you total control

You can use your own custom shaders and extend the language with C++. MOAI doesn't give you everything, instead it gives you the tools you need to develop any game you want.

Pro

Full source code is available

So it is extendable with C++

Pro

Easy-to-use particle engine

Uses a limited subset of Lua

Pro

Uses Lua, with LuaJIT where possible

Pro

Is used by many pro developers

Moai SDK is used by popular developers including Double Fine for their mobile game, Middle Manager of Justice, and for their Kickstarter hit, Broken Age(formerly, Double Fine Adventure.) It was also used to create the popular mobile game Bubble Ball 2.This proves that this engine can be used to make fully-featured and fun games.

Pro

API interfaces

Has options for development like Hanappe and Rapanui, providing a different way to interact with the engine.

Pro

Helpful community

The Moai SDK Forum is active and users will go to great extents to answer queries, post code snippets, beta test, and even purchase and give feedback on each others' games.

Pro

Helpful and detailed documentation

Although the Moai SDK is very advanced and uses complicated features, the documentation wiki thoroughly and clearly explains how to use these features, such as the Moai Cloud(a service that provides web services for your game), and multiple ways to build from source.

Pro

Easy to learn tool

Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine.

Pro

Completely free and open source

AGS is licensed under Artistic License 2.0 and is completely free for use for creating both freeware and commercial games.

Pro

Relatively well documented

Besides the manual there are multiple text and video tutorials and code samples written by community.

Pro

Used for a number of high-profile commercial releases

Adventure Game Studio has been used to develop games such as "Resonance", "Blackwell" series, "Gemini Rue", "Primordia".

Pro

Lots of assets available

An extensive library of game templates and script modules accumulated over years. You can construct a simple game in hours (if you know what you are doing).

Pro

Friendly community

An old, big and active community which would support newcomers not only in learning basics of the engine, but can help with every aspect of game making (including art, voice acting, moral support, etc).

Cons

Con

Not for beginning developers

The Moai SDK has very advanced features which allow it to create powerful games. A drawback from this is that it is not very suitable for beginners.

Con

Not necessarily tested or stable

Con

Scarce documentation

Since it is a minimalist framework there is not that much documentation, but if you are used to reading API references and source code you are good to go!

Con

Development has ceased

The last update was over a year ago. Users should not expect things to still work on future OS versions unless they're ready to fix them yourself.

Con

Development is slow

Further development of the engine is currently slow, done by only few people in their free time.

Con

Assets cover almost exclusively adventure/quest genre

The features, script functions and game templates are very biased towards adventure/quest genre. The non-adventure games were made in AGS (2D shooters, platformers, turn-based strategies), but their development usually requires to write everything from scratch.

Con

No visual editor for scripts

You have to actually write all scripts yourself.

Con

AGS Script isn't as full-featured as other scripting languages

Its own scripting language has lower syntax capabilities compared to modern script languages.

Con

Workflow is closely coupled with the editor

Workflow is very tied to the editor and custom file formats, which can cause problems for bigger, more professional projects (interfering with source control, parallel development, automated builds, etc)

Con

Graphics renderer is a bit dated

Graphics renderer is not well optimized for high-resolution games and complex effects.

Con

Uses dated tech

Engine is based on the old technologies, which impose number of limitations and may cause problems on latest systems (level of annoyance varies depending on your priorities).